


Juniper

by vein



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel), DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Bullying, Gen, Implicit Trauma, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 16:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4841894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vein/pseuds/vein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a prison fight, Mink remembers the rougher parts of his childhood, and how his sister helped him through them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Juniper

**Author's Note:**

> For Mink Week. I used both of today's prompts, Village and Scratch. Also available [here](http://streetcar-named-shiroba.tumblr.com/post/129515482462/juniper-mink-week-fic) on Tumblr.

Midorijima is far from where he grew up, but he has come to understand that all cultures share a few universal truths in common. For one, there's the fact that an oppressed class will fracture, will give way to infighting if they lack a leader to unite them. You can only spend so much of your life held down before you learn to seek out those weaker than you and hold them down in turn, to get ahead.

The second thing he's learned is that everywhere he has lived, names tend to work in similar ways. You have the name your parents gave you, imbued with hope and expectation. You have the name chosen for you by your peers, which carries with it the essence of your heart when you were young. You may have names you have earned through feats of intellect or strength, which you can bear like badges of honor. And you may have a name that you've chosen for yourself, though it's up to luck whether others decide you've earned the right to use it.

He knows that the man who picked a fight with him in the exercise yard is called Kuwayama. He easily pins Kuwayama to the blacktop as quickly and painlessly as he can. There's no use in prolonging a fight for show. A win can carry with it as many consequences as a loss, so he doesn't linger over the defeated man. He turns his back and lets Kuwayama gather his pride and go.

They come to him later, as he knew they would. He's seated on a metal cafeteria bench that bends beneath his weight, eating rice that's overcooked and swollen. Allegiances in here change like capricious spring winds, but he's spent enough time sitting back in observation to know who these men are, too: Yuu, Greeneye, Needle, Hayato, Minh-Anh.

He knows their serial numbers and knows of their crimes. Not one of them is what he'd call honorable, but in this place where your native language and the shade of your skin are considered of utmost importance, they've proven interesting to watch. For the boundaries they disregard, and for their willingness to approach a man who defeated their friend, he lends them a grudging respect.

Yuu steps forward first, posture guarded, sleeves rolled to his shoulders. “Oi. What's your name?”

He thought he knew how he was going to answer when it came to this, but a memory seizes him, catching his voice in his throat.

He thinks of his sister, and in his heart he understands what she'd have wanted him to say.

*

She was born at the tail end of winter, when they were sick of gray skies and dirty slush coating the ground. It had been a bad year for growth, and prayers for a bountiful spring hung in the air all around. He himself had prayed intensively, in the hope that his new sister would find warmth, kindness, and high spirits when she came into this world. He was nine years old then, and he'd been hoping for a sibling as far back as he could remember.

There wasn't much room at home for someone new, but they'd shove over and fit her in, the way they always did. His great-aunt spent hours at a time constructing beaded ornaments to decorate the baby's cradleboard, and he'd volunteer to rub her aching old feet just to have the chance to watch her at work. When the time came near, he worked up the nerve to string a simple strand of his own. He chose summer sunset colors for her: shades of yellow, orange, and pink.

They weren't a farming family, but they felt the brunt of the bad year regardless. Prices rose, and interest waned in the jewelry they crafted by hand. Until the gas ran out, his grandfather took the truck out every weekend, to sell to the tourists and buy what they needed in town.

He'd approached his mother one day, halfway hidden behind his long dark hair. He'd asked, in a voice that carried a hint of pride along with its shy quiver, whether it would be okay for him to give up one of his meals each day for his sister. He knew about the trouble with money, he explained, and she'd need more fuel for growing than he did, and so –

With a gentle smile and a ruffle of his hair, his mother cut him off. That's not something they'd need to worry about for quite some time, she said. She had rich brown curls that bounced when she laughed, and her hands were as broad and strong as his father's. He loved her fiercely, and when she told him to focus on growing up himself before making sacrifices, he did his best to obey.

Still, he was worried on the day his infant sister was brought home, passed around, and finally placed into his arms. She was nothing like he'd expected. She was reddened and wrinkled, and when she cried she looked pained. They said she looked like her mother, but to him, she just looked too small and raw to truly be alive. She _was_ alive, though – her tiny eyes, dark and serious, scanned the room and then lit on his face, and he was afraid. How could something like this be coaxed into the form of a full-grown human in a home where no one's been paid a cent in weeks?

But as usual, his mother was right. Come April, the village had bounced back. There was always fresh melon and greens now, and milk from the neighbor's new goat, which his mother fed his sister now and then in the littlest of sips. One morning when he heard a few of his aunts talking about patching the roof before the rain, he offered to do it himself in exchange for pocket money. He didn't know _how_ to do it, so he was grateful when his youngest aunt climbed up the ladder behind him to help. He took in the patient way she taught him, now and then placing her hands over his to show him what to do. He was glad to learn, but he tried to refuse her money at the end of the day, until she assured him that a lesson and some spare change was a small price to pay for getting to teach someone a new skill.

With those words knocking around in his head, he begged a ride off his grandfather, who'd started driving into town every week again. At first, his grandfather was reluctant to help. Money didn't need to burn a hole in a kid's pocket right away, he'd say. But the aunt who'd taught him about the roof backed him up, even if she did tease that he'd likely spend it all on candy, and he got to go to town in the end.

He _did_ buy some candy cigarettes, just to have something to chew on while the adults were smoking, but he spent the rest of the money on picture books. And when the rain came, he sat with his new sister under the roof he'd helped patch. He read to her, helping her trace the words and pictures with her chubby baby hands, and he felt like he'd done something good.

That autumn, he started school. There were thirty other kids in the village, spread out over acres upon acres of land, and it was understood that up to a certain age, you learned what you needed to at home. He was to turn ten that year, so it was time for him to go. He told himself that at school he'd be able to get more books to read, both alone and with his sister, and he was right. He found that he was also right to be afraid.

It was fine when they just called him Giant, although that was the first time he realized that he was tall. It was fine, too, when they rolled their eyes in exasperation at the way answers to the teacher's questions seemed to pop involuntarily out of him. The rest didn't go down so easily, not least of all because when he opened his eyes widely enough, he saw that it was true.

They laughed at him because his grandfather came home stinking drunk from his weekend journeys, pockets light from skimming off the top of his family's income. They laughed because they knew – _everyone_ knew, everyone but him – that when his youngest aunt went out on evening strolls without her husband, she was seeing the neighbors' eldest son out back behind their barn.

For the next few years, his sister was his only reprieve. Not because of her youth or innocence, but because at times it seemed like she was the only one who had made no promises to him, implicit or otherwise, about how the world worked, what was good and what wasn't, and what it all meant in the end. She had not betrayed him. As time went on and he saw that his prayers went unanswered, his devotion to those old rituals waned, but he still prayed to grow into an open and honest man, the kind of man who couldn't betray his sister even if he tried.

Which made it almost funny that the name _Mink_ stuck to him in the end. It implied dishonesty, but he knew that wasn't why his classmates chose it. Like a wild mink he was solitary, territorial – if you could call it _territorial_ , to want to keep faith in his family. He thought that cleverness was more important than claws. He was cowardly, to them; he'd keep quiet or leave long before he'd pick a fight or shout back.

When he was thirteen, and his sister four years old and reading easily on her own, he stayed too late in the schoolroom looking for a new book to share with her. She hadn't yet developed much of an appreciation for stories without pictures, but there were some with black-and-white sketches on the pages, for the younger kids. He flipped through several of them, enjoying the smell of new ink. He didn't notice that the teacher had left before he chose one.

They caught him off guard on the steps outside. One boy, the second biggest in the class after him, tried to tackle him to the ground. He twisted around and tried to block, and it worked, but too late he understood that it had only been a distraction. A second boy wrenched the book out of his hand and stomped on it, ripping the pages and grinding them into the mud. Someone else grabbed his backpack and flung it away. It came open, sending beads of glass and juniper flying against the sun.

He didn't tell anyone what had happened. Not when rumors already flew about how ran home every day to cry. He confessed to destroying the book on his own, and he cleaned the classroom for a week to cover the cost. He told his great-aunt that he'd lost her beads, then stood with his head bowed while she accused him of recklessness.

And he went to his youngest aunt. Never mind what they said about her. He had a hunch that she could quietly teach him how to fight, and she did.

The next time he was attacked, he moved fast. He didn't use his size against them, as they might have expected. He used the sharp eyes and nimble fingers that threading beads had lent him. Now he knew what to look for, and where to put his hands. He brought them down safely, leaving behind no cuts or bruises they might use as symbols of their strength. After that they didn't bother him; they no longer called him Mink, or much of anything else.

His world did not go back to the safe small size it once had been. He knew he couldn't blame the boys who mocked him, not completely. The world always was the way he'd learned to see it, and his freedom lay in how to take in that information.

When he was fifteen, his grandfather wrecked the truck. When he was sixteen, his youngest aunt hitched a ride to the city and never returned. When he was seventeen, they buried his great-aunt at a somber winter ceremony, on the eve of another barren year. She left him her smoking pipe, and she also left her beads, wires, patterns – everything – with a note assuring him of her love, and reminding him to take care. He felt as though he'd inherited a vast responsibility, and he spent the rest of the month walking around in a daze, wondering what he was meant to do with all of it.

One day he woke before anyone else in the house and stepped outside to sit on the porch, which creaked when he settled down. He wasn't sure if he'd gone through yet another growth spurt, or if the old boards needed repairing. For the first time, he lit his great-aunt's pipe. He watched the smoke curl up and let himself think of nothing.

Through the thin walls, he could hear his sister getting ready to follow. She emerged in boots, coat, mittens, and hat, and she sat down heavily beside him. He smiled. She was beautiful, kind, and intelligent, but she'd never quite be graceful, and he got the sense that she didn't want to be, anyway.

She asked him, “What are you thinking about all alone out here?”

“You,” he said, which by then was true.

Like him, she was tall, but her boots didn't quite reach the ground from there. She swung her legs and kicked her heels against the wood. “What about me?”

Before answering, he put out the pipe. He capped it and returned it to his pocket. Then he stood, picked her up under her arms and set her down on the ground beside him. He wandered down one of the paths that cut through the forest, and she followed. “I was thinking about how things change.”

“Things like what?”

Only she could drag so many words out of him at once. He sighed. “When you were a newborn baby, I was afraid of you.”

She giggled and sprang out in front of him, arms raised and teeth bared in a growl. “Cause I looked like this!”

“Not quite.” He scooped her up, draped her over his shoulder, and walked on as if she weighed nothing, crunching dried leaves beneath his boots as he went. He grinned behind her back, though.

“You're not afraid of _anything_ ,” she complained, kicking at him gently and ineffectively with her toes.

“That's not true.” He set her down and straightened her hair, pausing to retie a loose ribbon before the wind could catch it. Her eyes were the darkest brown he'd ever seen, and over the past summer she'd gotten freckles on her cheeks that still hadn't faded. “Everyone's afraid of something.”

“So what _are_ you afraid of?” she demanded, before pulling her braids from his grasp and skipping ahead.

He kept pace with her easily, taking long strides. “I used to be afraid of some boys from school.”

“Did they beat you up?”

“They tried.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him, disbelief plain on her face. “You're too tough for that.”

“Maybe. I wasn't always.” He put his hands in his pockets and looked up at the slice of gray winter sky visible between the two halves of the forest. “There's more to it than physical fighting.”

“Sooo...they called you names?”

“They did.”

She slowed to walk by his side and looped her hand through his arm. “ _What_ names, though?”

“Hm. Mostly, they called me Mink.”

“ _Mink_?” She laughed hard. “Like the animal? The endangered one?”

They'd just read a magazine article on endangered species hunted for fur a few weeks ago. She was inconsolable for the next hour, until their mother assured her that no one in the family owned leather or fur from anything raised on a farm. He'd never considered that connection before, even back when he did feel as though he were being hunted. “Yes. Like the animal.”

“But why?”

He thought about explaining to her the details he'd been so sure of once, but in the end, that wasn't the point. “It doesn't matter. They could have chosen any name. What they wanted was to make me feel as though I weren't entitled to my own identity.”

She was quiet, and he was sure his words went over her head. She was bright, but still a child. For all he once hated adults keeping him in the dark, he was glad that she hadn't yet faced anyone who wished to remove her power.

On some level, though, she understood. He knew because she stopped walking and reached up to touch his hair. “I think Mink is a good name, though. It means you're cuddly, and you're fast. And your hair is really pretty.”

And, he thought to himself, it meant that he didn't give up when cornered. He put a hand atop her head. “Thank you.”

“I mean it. I would wear a coat made from your hair, except for how it belongs on you.”

He squinted at her a little then, wondering if he'd been that peculiar at her age. “I appreciate that you aren't hunting me.”

She skipped along then, swinging her arms, carefree. “So if I call you Mink, it can be my secret name for you, right? Like I can write a letter to Mink and leave it right out in the open, and no one will even _guess_ that it's you.”

He didn't have the heart to tell her that within the next few years, he'd probably be moving out of their crowded little home. “I suppose.”

“I need a secret name then, too.”

“Do you have one in mind?”

She shook her head. Her braids flipped up to brush against her cheeks, which were beginning to show a hint of red from the winter chill. “You're better at that stuff than me.”

He thought about it. He could do that much for her, couldn't he? Give her a secret identity, one that couldn't be stolen.

He glanced at her, then touched the beads on his bracelet and said, “Juniper.”

“Like juniper berry beads?”

“More than that.” He put his arm around her shoulders and started heading back toward home. The rest of the family would wake soon and wonder where they'd gone, and it was his turn to make breakfast. “We build with it, too. Anything from houses to weapons. And there are medicines that can be made from different parts of it. It's – sturdy. Stable and helpful. Sacred, to some.”

After the words left his mouth, he wondered if he shouldn't have chosen a prettier name, but they'd have no connection to Daffodil or Butterfly. Juniper was something he could love, and it suited her. With their great-aunt gone and her beads in a box beneath his bed, it was a word that felt as though it were strong enough to carry the souls of the dead on its back.

He could see the way she rolled the name around in her mind as she spoke it. “Juniper.” She nodded once. “It's settled, then. Juniper and Mink.”

“Our secret,” he said, unable to help but offer her a smile.

“So we'll always be there for each other,” she said, as she pulled off her mitten and gave him her hand. “In a way no one else will ever understand.”

Then she held onto him tightly, and she walked with him, hand in hand, down the path that would lead them back home.

*

The third thing he has observed everywhere he's lived is that people bring their ghosts with them. That's what drives them to hurt others; he should know. When he looks at the men who stand around his table, he sees the faces of the boys who taunted him when he was young, and it warms him to them. He seeks vengeance for those boys as much as he seeks it for his own family. He doesn't have to love or forgive them to understand that not one of them deserved to die the way they did.

It's easy to look back and see the past through a pleasant haze of memory. He could remember only the good times – the lessons in cooking and fixing and beading, the walks he took and the books he read with Juniper – and think of the village where he grew up as idyllic, but that would be a disservice to those whose lives played out there.

He doesn't yet know that years from now he will be inseparably bonded to many of the men here awaiting his response, but he consciously chooses to take the first step down that road, to see where it might take him. They've lied, cheated, hurt others with intention and deliberation, and so have many of those who he's loved. So has he, himself.

There are those who he will always hold in higher regard, but they're not the start or the end of the story. Only the small, pure heart of it.

“So?” Yuu demands. He doesn't sit down. He's keeping what power he has, in his own way. “You planning on giving us your name, or – ”

“Mink,” he says. He looks up, meets each pair of eyes in turn. He's vulnerable with honesty. He says it again. “I'm called Mink.”

And from then on, he is.

 


End file.
